


The madman and the box

by donquichotte



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: F/M, Gen, Short, one shots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-09
Updated: 2013-04-09
Packaged: 2017-12-08 00:09:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 4,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/754694
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/donquichotte/pseuds/donquichotte
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Various one-shot fics set in the Doctor Who 'Verse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Where is she?

**Author's Note:**

> As soon as it was clear that Idris was actually the TARDIS, I kept hoping for some mention of Rose. But to no avail... so I wrote it myself.

"Where is my pink-and-yellow one?" Sexy asks abruptly, "My Valiant Child – she fit better." A pale hand trails down the woman's blue-clad body. "Of course she did. We created her for me. Where is she?"

"Gone. She's…gone." Her thief sounds so very sad.

"Oh. Oh, yes. That's where we are. It's hard to tell with her. So wrapped up in paradox. She shines like the stars. The Bad Wolf. Doctor, she is returning."

The shadows carve deep crags into her thief's worn face.

"No, that's already happened, too."

"Are you quite sure?" She could have sworn…

He nods heavily.

"Oh. I miss her."

"Me too."

"I would have shared her with you," she offers.

Her thief chokes.


	2. Where angels fear to tread

He's never been to the spiral citadel of Auria, nor the Rainbow Peninsula of Epsilene II, nor so many other places like them, renowned in story and song, lauded as beacons of peace and prosperity and beauty. He's always running towards danger, throwing himself into wars and revolutions and madcap rescues. He unerringly, almost eagerly, faces the darkest creatures in the cosmos ( _yes, even himself_ ) and wanders to the most dangerous corners of the Universe. He lives and breathes for the terror and excitement of the chase.

But those havens, those pinnacles of civilisation, he cannot bring himself to visit. He's been tempted, because surely, _surely_ , he could catch a break, could relax and enjoy a few hours of calm. But he won't. He's the Oncoming Storm, with trouble and chaos snapping at his heels like thought and memory, and he can't pollute such purity with his crimes and his grief and his burdens. 

He might have dared, once upon a time, when he was younger, when it was all a game, when the years weren't pressing down on him like solitude ( _or maybe it was the solitude pressing down like years_ ). But now? Now when he is stained with the blood of so so so so many ( _not just his own – his own – people, but so many more, before and since_ ) and his mistakes tear holes in reality? 

Now, he doesn't dare. 


	3. Absolution

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sort of an AU of "The Doctor's Wife", if there had been Time Lords that survived. I kind of want to elaborate (i.e. how this would change other events of the episode/series), but I fear that I don't have the stamina...

He can hear them, so so many voices, filling up that void in his mind and even their terror and pain doesn't diminish the easing of the ache of emptiness.

_I'm coming,_ he thinks,  _I'm coming; where are you?_  He's not actually projecting, so they can't hear him, but they answer nonetheless.

_I'm here! I'm here! I'm here!_  chants a female voice on the edge of hysteria.

_I'm still alive!_  intones the Corsair.

_Help,_ breathes a pleasant alto.

All the words and voices that add up to one simple message, the message he could never resist.

_Save us._

He's running, now, through the dark corridors, sprinting. Extending the sonic, he scans for life forms. There! Behind that door is all that's left of his people.

It's locked, of course. Further scans show that it is in fact a semi-stable dimensional portal triple dead-lock sealed and isomorphically locked, with quantum bindings.

He's never believed in impossible, really, and fifteen minutes, four minor explosions and a Garavian hair dryer later, he is extending one slightly singed hand to the handle of a grimy metal door.

And then they are there, thirty-two gloriously real and incredibly alive Time Lords. Dirty, half starved, obviously long-time captives, but with that familiar, deep-seated pride in their eyes.

They recognise him as one of their own and he feels their minds brush against his barriers, feels their puzzlement as he refuses contact.

_I can't. I can't. I can't._

"What news of the War, General?"

His old, hated title, branded into his timelines for all to see. Opening his mouth to reply, he finds his throat too tight to produce words (he doesn't know what he would have said, anyways). Mute, he looks upon their determined, drawn faces.

"Doctor?" The voice is female, husky and incredulous. As the speaker moves to the front of the crowd, he looks over her unfamiliar face. He meets her dark eyes and there is something, some quirk of personality, in them that strikes him like a blow.

_Romana._

It is the final straw and just like that he falls to his knees, weeping, his head in his hands. Time Lords are not given to intense emotions and he can feel their confusion and discomfort at his display, but he is already halfway to hysterical and unlikely to turn back now. It is Romana, of course, who breaks the tableau and moves to embrace him, running gentle fingers through his hair as he sobs into her shoulder.

After a few minutes he regains enough control to pull away and swipe a sleeve across his face.

"If you've recovered,  _General_ ," the tone is scathing and Romana frowns angrily at the speaker, "we need to know the state of affairs."

He stands to look the man in the eyes.

"There is no War. There was never a War, not now."

"But –"

"Time-locked.

"Gallifrey?"

"Gone."

He lets them see now, what he had been hiding: his choice, his burden. The push of a button and the fire. The screams of the dying on both sides.

They recoil – all of them, even Romana.

Of course; how stupid to think of forgiveness.

Now that he's started, he can't stop and the years since that final resolution begin pouring out of him in a torrent.

Loneliness, a paralysing isolation, grief, nightmares. The hope he'd found in a pair of dark eyes and a hand to hold. The Daleks, returning time and time again. And more; memory after memory spilling into their stunned, horrified minds. When it's done, he is left panting, feeling empty and dazed.

There is a silence.

"The loss of Gallifrey and the Eye of Harmony is a great blow," one of the older men says finally in what is probably the biggest understatement ever made. "I cannot sanction your actions, Doctor, but to know the Time War is ended brings an easing to me."

Not forgiveness, no, but acceptance. Understanding.

"That sounds almost like sympathy," spits another Time Lord angrily, "for a  _murderer._  Even before the War, he was an interfering menace, but  _this_ , this cannot be let stand. He must be punished. Severely."

"Silence, Rindan! He did what was necessary. What, perhaps, no other would have been able to do. Doctor, I salute you."

They all speak, some furious, some accepting, most just bewildered. In the end, it comes down to the fact that he has the only working TARDIS left, and that he is very good at surviving insurmountable danger. They are with him, for now, at least until they are out of the bubble universe.

He is not forgiven, but he is hopeful. He likes hope.


	4. Eternity in an hour

She sees everything, she is everything. Was everything. Is-was-will be-might be. She is the coalescence of all the moments of time, every event, every possibility, every path.

But for her, there is only one beginning.

The paradox is beautiful, a twisted loop, folded back on itself, spinning out through time and space. With one glimmer of intention, she will create herself, and in so doing, she will shape the Universe. She reaches out and plants life in a womb that was not meant to carry fruit. It is such a simple thing, the joining of these cells, of these atoms. And yet, she tastes the deliciously intricate web of causality spreading from that one action. Because this life, this small human life, has left the Earth and her actions will be felt, rippling through eons. And one day, she was sent home, and she will come back, and she is coming back, and she will save them, the Doctor, her Doctor, and Jack, lonely Jack, who will live and live and live. There is sadness in that, in what must be done. That sadness is why Rose Tyler is needed – the human emotion, sadness and pity and compassion and love, so much love that she is spilling over with it. So much love that it binds the endless power of the Bad Wolf.

Somewhere, somewhen, the tiny fragment of consciousness that is Rose Tyler, clinging to individuality amidst the howling rush of golden eternity, understands her purpose: there is no Rose Tyler without the Doctor. She was created to save him, born for him, to love him enough to turn a monster into a goddess.

She does not fail.


	5. Just passing through

Traveling by Dimension Cannon is unpleasant, to say the least. They'd expected some discomfort, obviously – being de-molecularised and then hurled through the world barriers and re-constituted can't exactly be considered first-class travel – but, as it turns out, universe hopping is a three-step operation: jump from world A to the Void, let Cannon recalibrate, jump to world B. She'd panicked the first time, and jumped without waiting for calibration. Not an experience she's eager to repeat. (By some miracle, she'd managed to get home with the help of a depressed and sarcastic Doctor and his sociopathic android 'frenemy', but that's another story entirely.)

When the Doctor had explained it to her, Rose had pictured the Void as a white room, a huge, empty, featureless white room. Of course, she was completely wrong – the human mind just isn't equipped to deal with the concept of absolute nothing (she suspects she's no longer quite human, but maybe she's just mad).  _The Howling_ , he'd also said, and that description is a little better, a little more encompassing of the staggering vacuum.

She's almost used to it by now, after so many trips. It has no dimension, this non-space, at once a macrocosm and a microcosm, and she'll never be able to say if it's light or dark. It simply  _is_ , existing without any definition. And it is completely empty.

Except when it's not.

A few times, she's caught some wisp of awareness passing by her, some bit of  _something_  in the nothing. But they seem…distant. Only not distant so much as discrete – they are not analogous to her.  _Like comparing apples and oranges,_  says the voice of a long-ago maths teacher.

There is something in her frame of reference, now. She can feel its presence, tired and yearning and tentative.

_What are you?_  The voice in her head is male, cultured, British.

"I'm Rose Tyler." It's not really an answer, she knows (she doesn't have the answer, though something deep inside whispers  _Bad Wolf_ ). "Who are you?"

_In the mortal world, I was once known as Mariner. It would…please me to use that name once again._

There is a silence, short and searching and tense.

_You are mortal, and yet there is something about you that is…not. You shine unlike anything else in the Howling; you are so bright, so_ alive.  _I can almost feel the light in you._

In Rose's wide range of experience, that particular tone of voice generally means 'I'm hungry, and you look tasty'. Steeling herself for an attack, she readies the Cannon – it's nearly done calibrating.

_You're frightened._ He sounds surprised.  _I mean you no harm._

"Okay, yeah, heard that one before."

_You misunderstand my motives. My kind, we have no life_ ; _we merely exist, Eternal, banished to the Howling. To be in your presence is…a delight._

He studies her then. She can feel it. She can feel him take her image and fold it up, only to stretch it out again in a new way, so he can examine every possible angle of her, every hidden facet.

_There is a word about you,_ he says finally,  _a word pounding in your heart and your mind and through your veins and your thoughts._

"What word?" She knows, of course: what else could it be but –

_Doctor._

"I'm looking for him," she says, for no reason. Calibration is done, but her finger hesitates on the trigger.

_When you find him, you may tell him that I am…sorry for what transpired at our last meeting. It was not what I intended._

"Yeah, alright," Rose tells him, not even surprised (well, maybe a little; old acquaintances of the Doctor aren't usually looking to apologize).

She fires the cannon, and the world fades in from nothingness.


	6. All in the family

"Please?" Rose widened her eyes pleadingly. "We don't even have to stop at Mum's this time."

Trying very hard to avoid his companion's gaze, the Doctor  _absolutely did not_  whine, "But Rose, we could go to Falane. Haven't I ever told you about Falane? There are seven moons – can you imagine seven moons? It makes charting the tides very complex, you know – and each one's a different colour, and once every three hundred years they're all in the sky at once and the locals have this huge festival. I can take you there in 156.# Delta-V. Inter-galatically acclaimed party, that was. Yes?"

"Doctor. I want to go see my great-aunt and uncle. Anyways, you have a time-machine – it's not like we can't go to your moon-festival any time you like."

"Fine," huffed the Doctor, resolving for the thousandth time to do something about his apparent inability to deny Rose Tyler anything. "London, boring early twenty-first century London, it is, then."

"Thank you!" With a small squeal, Rose flung herself into his arms and hugged him tightly.

Why was it so important to learn to resist Rose's wiles, again?

oO*Oo

"Aunt Barbara – my Gran Prentiss' sister – was always my favourite relative. She's always so dignified and elegant, but not in a stuffy way. I used to want to be her when I grew up, except for her job: history teacher." Rose grimaced and then gave a small laugh. "And look at me – drop-out shop-girl flitting through time and space."

"Hmmmm." The Doctor fiddled with his controls some more and peered at some flashing lights. "Right."

"And you're not even listening to me."

A violent shaking interrupted whatever response he might have made and, through force of long habit, they both reached out to grab supports.

When the shaking ceased, the Time Lord beamed at his companion. "Here we are then. Are you sure you want to miss the – "

"Yes." Just before stepping outside the doors, Rose turned back and held out a hand. "You coming?"

He was tempted; her hand, outstretched towards him, looked so inviting. But, after all she was going to visit her  _great-aunt_. It didn't get much more domestic than that. And the aunt was on Jackie's side of the family.

"Nah. Got some repairs to do. You run along, and don't get into trouble, now."

"Yes, sir." She gave him a salute that would give any legitimate officer a heart attack, and that cheeky smile that always,  _always_  made him feel as though  _he_  were having a hearts attack, and then she was gone in a flash of gold hair and red hoodie.

He attempted to ignore his immediate feeling of loss, and busied himself with tinkering superfluously around the TARDIS circuits.

oO*Oo

Emerging from the TARDIS, Rose glanced around and grinned. "Score one for the Doctor," she muttered "Right neighbourhood."

With the ease of long practice she quickly spotted temporal clues – there was a 2006 model car, and, yes, a newspaper.

"March 20th, 2007." With a nod to the TARDIS and its occupant, she complimented the accuracy. "Well done."

Time and place established to her satisfaction, Rose made her way through her aunt's front garden and raised her hand to knock on door.

It swung open before her hand made contact, and her Aunt Barbara nearly crashed into her.

"Ian! I swear I heard – Rose!"

"Hi Aunt Barbara. Um. Is this a bad time? I was just in the area and uh..."

"No, not at all, Rose. I just thought, for a moment, that I heard an... old...friend..." The end of the older woman's sentence trailed away as her focus shifted to somewhere over Rose's shoulder. Turning to look, Rose saw nothing unusual except the TARDIS, and people just didn't notice the time ship.

"Aunt Barbara?" she asked, a little worried.

Ignoring her great-niece, Barbara pressed a hand to her chest and called again for her husband. "Ian! Come quickly! Ian!"

From somewhere inside the house, a man's voice, muffled, made its way to their ears. "Coming Barbara. What is it? You'd think, from the way you were yelling, that you'd been captured by a – oh, hello, Rose." He shot a reproachful look at his wife. "You needn't sound so panicked, darling. It's just Rose."

"No, Ian. Look." She gestured to the street, and following the movement with his eyes, Ian sucked in a breath.

"Is that -? But it can't be!"

Growing more and more confused by the second, Rose turned again to look and saw, again, only the TARDIS out of place. Throwing caution to the winds, she asked, "Are you looking at that police box?"

The older couple jumped, startled by the reminder of her presence. "Oh, yes. I don't remember seeing it there before. They were dead common when I was younger, but you don't see many of them nowadays." Barbara sounded almost normal, but there was a tremor of excitement underlying her words.

Suspicious now, Rose narrowed her eyes. "Oh, I know all about  _police boxes_. They're quite a bit  _roomier_  on the inside, wouldn't you say?"

"Now wait a minute!" Ian broke in, "Are you trying to say that you've, well, traveled in a  _police box_?"

"Yes, I am." Rose grinned. "I don't suppose you happened to know the owner of the  _police box_?"

"As a matter of fact...A Doctor, wasn't he?"

"I don't believe it!" Rose howled. "He has no idea! And on my mum's side too!" She dissolved into giggles, leaving Barbara and Ian gaping.

"Ian, I think we should invite Rose in, don't you?"

"Right, yes. Come along Rose." They shepherded the still giggling girl into the living room where she sank onto a couch.

"I've got it!" Ian shouted suddenly. "That year you were missing! We should have known: it happened to us, too."

"So, you traveled with the Doctor?" Rose leaned forwards intently. "When?"

"Oh, well, it was 1963 when he kidnapped us and took us all over time and space."

" _Kidnapped?_ "

"Oh yes. I admit that we forced our way into the TARDIS, but the crafty old man just took us off to the caveman days and couldn't get us home for ages."

"That sounds like the Doctor. You said he was an old man?"

"Yes, of course."

"He's not old now." It came out a little defensively – he was older, yes, but not  _that_  old, no matter what her mum said.

"But he was old! White hair and a cane!"

"He must've regenerated," Rose mused. "I wonder which one you knew."

"What the blazes do you mean?"

"It always amazes me," Barbara said archly to her husband, "that after all you've seen, and all you've done, you still get so adorably ruffled by anything that smacks of the unusual.

"But Rose, dear, I think we would both like to hear the story properly."

As Ian spluttered indignantly, Rose settled back to tell the story. Her great-aunt and uncle were an excellent audience and listened attentively (mostly because Barbara kept a stern eye on her husband's outbursts).

When she was done, both her relatives were left astonished.

"You mean to say," Ian began, "that he's a nine-hundred-year-old alien? That's fantastic!"

Rose made a small sound at the word. "He used to say that, all the time. Back before he changed. Everything was 'fantastic'." She looked wistful for a moment, but quickly regained her happy mood. "Now you tell me your story! I want to hear this."

"I suppose," Barbara mused quietly, "that it all began at Coal Hill School, with an extraordinary girl named Susan Foreman, who had an extraordinary grandfather –"

"He was traveling with his  _granddaughter_?" Rose gaped. "And he complains about domesticity!" Realising she'd interrupted, Rose looked sheepish. "Oh, sorry. Go on."

Ian chuckled deeply. "Well, we were worried about Susan; she was just so odd! So we dug up her information and tracked her down. Found out her address was a scrap yard that contained the most interesting item – a police box. We eventually found ourselves standing in a junkyard, arguing with a grumpy old man. Susan came out to see what was happening and we pushed our way in. Got a good shock, too. But we were even more shocked when the doors closed and he wouldn't let us out. Yelled something about preserving timelines and took us off to visit the cavemen."

The couple continued their story, taking turns and often sending Rose into fits of laughter.

By the time they ran out of funny anecdotes, all three of them were gasping for breath. Rose leaned forwards with a wicked grin. "I have an idea."

oO*Oo

The Doctor winced as a circuit sparked and stuck a finger in his mouth. Then, he heard what could only be Rose's key in the lock and smiled happily. It seemed a long time since she'd left.

"And this is the TARDIS, our time-and-space ship." Rose's voice, with the tone of a tour guide, filtered through the open door.

The Doctor sat up so abruptly that he smacked his head on the console.

"Rose!" he yelped, "You can't go bringing people into the TARDIS! It's bad enough that your mother –" He broke off, gaping, as he got a good look at the couple he assumed to be Rose's relatives. " _What!_ "

"Hello, Doctor." The woman smiled as Rose dissolved into hysterics.

"But...Barbara...Ian. Rose.  _What?_ "

"If you'd listened at all when I was telling you about my great-aunt and uncle, you'd have realised."

"I listened." The Doctor grumbled.

"Oh, then I suppose I just  _forgot_  to mention that I was related to some of your former companions?"

"I expect you must have."

Despite his haughty superiority, Rose grinned at him. "You're ridiculous." She said fondly. "And you have guests."


	7. Every day a little death

The TARDIS vanished before their eyes, the grinding falling like a mournful betrayal on their ears.

Suddenly Rose's palm met the Doctor's face in a slap that resounded in the heavy silence of the beach.

"What?" he gasped, a hand flying to his cheek.

"You arrogant idiot!" hissed the girl furiously before turning away from the bewildered man. "Mum, I need your –"

Tears forming in her eyes, Jackie pressed the dimension hopper into her daughter's hands. Dropping the chain over her head quickly, Rose wrapped and arm around the Doctor's waist and slammed the yellow button.

The weeping Jackie Tyler and the beach where she stood faded out of sight.

A universe away, the Doctor felt himself solidify on another beach, identical but for the older woman, and then, a moment later, he dimly felt the walls between universes snap closed.

"Rose… you just – ! The walls are closed!" the Doctor protested.

"I know, Doctor." Her voice was cold with anger. "And I told him – you – that I would stay with him forever, and that should've been my choice to make, but it's bigger than that, even."

Pacing angrily, Rose continued over his half-formed questions. "A few months after Bad Wolf Bay, Torchwood began picking up on these tears in reality. The universe was unravelling and –"

"Yes, that was Davros, and the reality bomb."

"No, Doctor. It wasn't Davros. The scientists tracked down the source of the disturbances, and they found me. It's like you said, back with my Dad; there was someone alive who shouldn't be. It was okay for Mum, and I guess Mickey, too, 'cause there was room for them, sort of. There was a space in the timelines for the actions of Jackie Tyler and Rickey Smith. There was no possibility for the actions of Rose Tyler, because I didn't exist." She laughed bitterly. "I was put under house arrest, practically, because even walking down the street, I was tearing apart reality. And so Torchwood began investigating dimension travel, before the stars started going out."

The Doctor stared at her, putting together the pieces. "So when the bomb began destroying the walls, your Torchwood already had the equipment."

Nodding, Rose agreed, "Yeah, and they called me up. But the calibration was a bit off, mostly 'cause of the way time passes differently from one universe to another, so I kept missing you. Ran into Donna a few times, saw a few other companions of yours.

"I was meant to stay in this universe – I  _have_  to stay in this universe. And you just left me on the beach there, without even sayin'  _goodbye_!" Tears threatened as Rose finished, her voice growing high and thin. "So," the blonde continued, trying for professionalism, "even if – even if he doesn't want me anymore, I have to stay here. I'm sorry for dragging you back, but I couldn't know for sure that you wouldn't have the same effect."

"I want to stay with you." The Doctor replied immediately, staring into her eyes. "He does want you; you have to know that."

Rose just shrugged, and the Doctor's heart (his one human heart) cracked a little because he had finally broken Rose Tyler's unshakeable faith. He had abandoned her one too many times and shattered her will to fight a way back to him.

"We could go to Cardiff," Rose offered. "Jack said, before we dropped him off, he said I was always welcome."

Wordlessly, he reached out a hand and she took it tentatively. Hand in hand, they walked down the beach and the waves reached up and wiped away their footprints.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from the Sonheim musical "A Little Night Music"


End file.
